08.23.16

Loves, as many of you know, the past 18 months has seen my life upturned. I’ve gotten smacked in the face (and on the ass) with LESSON after LESSON after LESSON. It has been a full plate of uncertainty, fear, pain and loss.

But it was also unbelievable bliss, excitement, freedom and growth.

There’s always that question. Whether it’s with a spouse, a career, a location, a crazy idea or a tie to our past… there’s always that question. ‘Do I risk everything for the simple act of feeling more MYSELF?’ Maybe, if you’re lucky, you won’t be risking everything. But even if that’s the case, it usually FEELS like we’re standing on a cliff & wondering why the HELL would we jump when we could just stay here… at least we’re SAFE, right?

And from that moment, we begin our dance with Safety & Excitement. Because, let’s be real, most of us because of our current society have much more of one than the other (at least that is our perception).

When it came time for me to end my marriage (though it was a mutual decision), it was as if the drum beat of ‘Excitement’ was so loud in my ears that I couldn’t ignore it any longer. My true nature had been carelessly buried so long ago that when I finally was able to touch her & talk to her… she WOULDN’T SHUT UP. She was like ‘OH HOLY HELL, YES! I have finally made it to your consciousness and I am NOT letting go! We’re going to DO this now, so GET ON BOARD.’ My friends are so sweet to tell me how brave I was to start a brand new life… but I can’t really take all the credit. No matter how much I cried, how much I just pulled up my covers and tried to pretend it was all a bad dream… that my best friend of 12 years was still going to be with me & that I had SECURITY… My Wild Woman had a hold on me and she wasn’t letting go for shit. So I took a deep breath, and jumped with her.

Whatever you are contemplating in your life, there is no way to begin it unless you feel SO deeply and SO strongly the value of being true to yourself. However big or small, there’s a voice in you that knows exactly what it wants to do. All you have to know is that if you do not take that leap… will you be doing/being what is true to your inner Wild self?

Beginning this November, I will be helping you uncover the Wild Self, in glorious, juicy detail, and sending you on a journey of Discovery and truth. I choose to JUMP once again!

A Brand Shoot image of the gorgeous Shauna Karine – Soul Doula (new site & so much magical goodness from her coming soon!) And as you may have noticed, my Brand Shoot site is now gone (Poof! Yay!) to make way for a totally sexy & harmonious integration with my current website. Re-Launch coming VERY soon!!!

08.03.16

Let’s be real. In our current culture, women tend to neglect their true nature in business. We see it clearly in typical Personal Brand Shoots. When we suppress ourselves, we send a message of shutting down instead of authenticity and acceptance. This is why, my Brand Shoot work is with clients whose work is all about up-leveling our collective energy.

When we bring our ‎raw‬, ‪sensual‬, real,‬ ‪whole‬ selves into our lives and businesses, we thrive. And we give much needed inspiration to women everywhere to embrace ALL of their beautiful facets… especially the most powerful of all… sexuality. Our life force.

Get ready for a re-launch like no other. I can’t wait to play even bigger in this field and support women like Shauna, who are on the path and guiding souls to their fullest potential.

This movement, that I am calling in, isn’t about changing the game. It isn’t about changing who we are. It isn’t about amplifying something that is naturally quiet. It is about giving a voice and an image to something that is LOUD. So loud that we can’t sleep at night, can’t focus during the day. So loud that we get frustrated at small things and we don’t know why. The voice is begging us to step into ourselves. To fully inhabit our bodies. To fully inhabit our souls. To STOP. SHUTTING. DOWN. To start being whole. To shake off the shame. To reject the status quo. To pay absolutely zero attention to what is expected and tune into what is NEEDED.

06.06.16

These past few months have been pretty raw. And I didn’t have the desire or energy to try and decide who I would tell what to, how many filters I would be switching through & how open I could be. So I just decided to be real.

I set 99% of my Facebook posts to ‘Public’. I talk about dating and my inner erotic creature (& how I found her)… I talk about being weirdly happy about silly things, and I talk about being anxious/pissed/scared/sad when I am. I don’t wonder what ‘other people’ are going to think… seriously, only my friends are truly paying attention and if ‘other people’ happen to actually care & think I’m strange…. GO me. But what I wasn’t prepared for was doing this AND being a woman in this Patriarchal culture. Being open like this is totally new to me. But it felt completely natural, and it still does. The issue I find myself running into is…. condescension. Mostly from men (sorry guys). When, for instance, I would post about a hilarious & kind of pathetic online dating incident…. I would receive REALLY cliche & obvious ‘life advice’.

The responses to those stories range from ‘You should get offline, all those sites are just going to lead to X’, to ‘When you stop looking, it’s true, that’s when it happens!’ to ‘Don’t spend so much time worrying about finding someone, just be happy with who you are’. You guys. Seriously. The list goes on and on. A plethora of ‘Just do ___’ and ‘You should ____’….

Essentially… advice you would give a young teenage daughter. Of your OWN.

Not advice you would give to a 30-something woman with HUGE Life-transforming personal work under her belt. The things I’ve learned, the tools I have, the experiences I’ve gotten through places like Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts and through working with Jaiya Ma, a somatic sexologist, would BLOW their little minds. And yet, I am seen as an inexperienced, scared/lost little girl who needs a man to tell her ‘Everything will be okay’. Hmm… You know what? I kind of love that.

I love men. Love, Love, LOVE them. What an incredibly sweet gesture… to see a woman in ‘pain’ and offer her what you have… even if what you have is 4th Grade Life Advice. Oh, did I mention I’m a Brat? I should’ve, sorry ;) But it’s the truth. I see the masculine in his earnest desire to ‘fix’. And I have nothing but love for it. Okay, a BUTTLOAD of frustration & wanting to smack him, but THEN, nothing but love. Because, you know what? I AM really inexperienced! I’ve actually never really dated before! So my honesty about where I’m at is big and open and visible and that’s okay. When it comes to dating, I pretty much AM like a baby teenager.

But here’s the catch… I’m SO NOT. I won’t say I’ve lived a very big life up until now (there is SO much traveling that needs to happen you guys!!) but I will say that I am proud to be an Awakened Woman. I am an Empath. I am a Goddess. I am a Lover. I am a Friend. I am well versed in claiming my emotions, right where I am and not apologizing for them. I claim what I want. I claim what I don’t. I know how to protect my energy. I know how to hold space. I know how to break down. I know how to stand up. And I know that my choices are mine alone and don’t have to make sense to anyone else. When I say I am caught in self-loathing… I mean it. I own it. And I don’t need someone saying ‘Just try to come from a place of Gratitude’. Baby, I grew up watching Oprah, you sound like 25 years ago to me. But OH HOW I THANK YOU, you sweet, caring man!

I know seeing someone in pain or going through something is difficult. Uncomfortable. Even painful for the masculine. You want me to change course immediately, maybe even to soothe your own discomfort. And I so get that. But I just wanted to let you know… I am just being open. I am just saying out loud what millions of people are going through and maybe not saying out loud. I have just decided to let myself be seen. I will continue to own where I’m at, every step of the way. I will continue to walk with my eyes open… into triumph, into brokenness, into the deep dark swamp of anger or sadness, and into the sun again. Over and over. Like the wildly imperfect female human that I am. And if you want to be there, if you are called to care and soothe and comfort… just let me know you see me. Right where I am. And you support me feeling exactly what I am. And you love me, exactly as I am.

04.28.16

I’m a smoker in my dreams. And to this day, I’ve never smoked a cigarette. But…

When I was really young (about 6 or 7 I think), I went outside and collected a couple cigarette butts that my neighbor, Mary Lou, discarded. And I hid them under my bed.

Now, I definitely never lit them and I don’t even think I put one in my mouth. But I took them. I wanted them. I somehow knew that part of my persona was this… badass. Not even a rebel. Rebels tried to get a rush from doing something they thought was ‘forbidden’. But I didn’t want it to be forbidden. I just wanted to BE.

Of course my mother had an attack… I think she might’ve believed that I’d smoked them. Which I remember being confounded by. As she was screaming at me, pushing me to confess what I’d done… I remember thinking ‘That’s GROSS! Why would I put this in my mouth and light it? I’m a KID! It was in the GUTTER!’ Turns out… she thought what I’d done was heinous enough, just storing them under my bed, and I’m sure it scared her. That she had a daughter that had it in her to think about cigarettes so seriously that she’d pick them up from the street, used. But the truth is, I had no desire to actually smoke. And the practice still seems a little silly to me. I didn’t want to smoke. But… I wanted to be a smoker. And yes, there’s a difference.

What I’ve learned over the past 18 months about myself, mainly due to working with the incredible Jaiya Ma (somatic sexologist/educator/mentor/coach) has been a process of discovering so many awesomely fun things, but more than that, it was a process of coming back to myself. But in a way that was brand new. I recognized these truths about myself that have ALWAYS been there, so clearly, but I’d denied them for so long because of the relationship I was in. I was never asked to be a different person. I was never asked to tamp down my traits. But it’s what I did. And I had to learn the hard way.

When I do a Boudoir or Brand Shoot… it’s not just about creating something ‘pretty’. It’s not about putting together a perfect-looking scene of glamour & posing or a sitting outside in a fancy outfit, drinking a cappuccino at a Cafe you’ve never been to. It’s about BEING. Yes, I help style wardrobe and yes, I’ve got my hair & makeup artist with me… but it’s not to help you fool people into thinking you’re this particular persona…. it’s to put an exclamation point on the reality of YOU.

When I learned, accepted, and embraced these traits about myself… that I have a dark, feminine persona, that I SHOULD be buying mostly black clothes, that I love to sway and shake my ass to a heavy, down-beat dub-step-style song, that when I do my makeup, the darker & smudgier my eyes, the better, that I prefer rough textures (in some things) over smooth, that I prefer a thud or a scratch on my skin over a gliding touch or a sting, that I can bring out my brattiness… and it can be SUCH a good thing!… and so many more big truths… when I did that, I was even more sure of my purpose with my work. That it’s about finding your core traits and magnifying them.

My Personality Brand clients get to explore the depths. And I get to go with them. We get to play with all the different facets of their life and show them, maybe for the first time, to the world. The process of owning every piece, from leader to lover to friend, daughter, mother, marathoner, couch potato. From calm yogi to emotional outpours, from green smoothies to bottles of wine. They’re ALL beautiful. They’re all perfect. Because they’re all REAL.

With Boudoir, I get to play. I get to create something from my fantasy rather than pure reality. Beauty is found in that process so magnetically and magically. Playing in different arenas in my Boudoir work doesn’t just feed my desire to create & fulfill what I know is truly ME… it often sparks my client to remember who SHE is also. And sometimes, discover who she is for the first time. Watching a woman’s eyes grow wide with recognition of how this vision that I’ve created with them feels so TRUE? Nothing more incredible than that moment. She may tell me she never would’ve discovered that on her own. That she never would’ve worn ‘this’ or done her hair & makeup like ‘that’ and that she feels truly alive. In a way she never expected and doesn’t know how to process yet. That she feels sparked, supported, excited. Truly SEEN.

And that’s what it’s all about. Whether you are a dream-smoker, a rock-climber, a musician, a sex-geek, a wanderer, a guide, a fighter, a facilitator or a fairy…. there’s no more important place to start than by simply BEING.